How To Publish A Book In 2 Weeks (For Less Than $250), article.
This is written from from a business viewpoint, not a high-literary one. But it's good to sometimes get an impression of how simple, cheap, and fast something can be done if one wants. And for somebody with the right mind and experience, fast does not mean sloppy. (Dickens was an amazingly fast writer.)
By the way, it sounds to me like the article says that print-on-demand books cost at least $10 per copy, but I asked the author and he says he gets them for $2.50.
The article does not talk much about fulfilment, meaning taking payment and shipping books. This is far from trivial, so an alternative is to focus solely on ebooks, which is successful for many authors already.
He says that most bestselling authors were rich already but this doesn't seem to be the case. Sure there are the crappy books published every year by celebrities but most authors seem to have come from Humble Beginnings, U.S.A.
ReplyDeleteAnd for somebody with the right mind and experience, fast does not mean sloppy. (Dickens was an amazingly fast writer.)
They all seem to have been in those days. Partly it's self discipline. Anthony Trollope set aside a certain amount of time every day, always at the same time every day, to write and if he finished a novel with ten minutes left in his allotted writing time he immediately started another book. I don't know what kind of money could be made from writing in those days, so maybe they had to do volume.
Probably it always was so that a very tiny number of writers were a fab successful, a few could make a living, and the bulk couldn't.
ReplyDeleteBrian Tracy writes four books every year. He has so far published 52, many of them best sellers.
ReplyDeleteHe says it takes him 50 hours to write a book from start to finish. He takes seven edit passes over the text, delivering a fully edited ready-to-be-printed work to the publisher.
That's admirable.
ReplyDeleteAlthough, particularly in non-fiction, it makes me wonder: how much can one man have to say?
Right. His first book, Maximum Achievement, continues to be his best. There is a lot of rehashed material in his later books. But they often do view the subject matter from a different angle, and hence may work better for some.
ReplyDeleteIt's probably easy to write books like that as they're basically complete bullshit. Equivalent to those columnists in newspapers who just write about general everyday shit that happens to them. You can bang those out, and it's just the luck of the draw if you get to be one of the bullshit artists who cashes in.
ReplyDeleteI haven't read enough of them to judge that.
ReplyDeleteBut I can imagine they can't be too hard to write for the unconscientious. Funny enough I've just now watched the Family Guy where Brian decides to write a shite self-help book, "Wish it, Want it, Get it", and it becomes a hit of course.
Sales were probably better than for his other book, Faster Than the Speed of Love.
ReplyDeleteNo comparison. The episode started with dozens of boxes of that book being returned to him.
ReplyDeleteWasn't that the book where he ripped off the plots to those Iron Eagle movies? ;-)
ReplyDeleteHaha.
ReplyDeleteI think there is a really good point: recording yourself and having it written down. It does help a lot! I did it once, it did work, but I have not really thought about it as a technique to be used. But now that I read this, I think back, and indeed, it is very useful.
> Although, particularly in non-fiction, it makes me wonder: how much can one man have to say?
ReplyDeleteGood point :)
The recording thing: yes, I was thinking about that too. Especially an interview format. I never run out of things to say in an interview, and you have somebody right there who has to understand what you say, so your explanations come naturally.
ReplyDeleteOf course it may have to be edited a lot, but that's another matter.
I almost always enjoy reading interviews too, they are usually lively.
Yeah! Sounds good. I will just get my Mac repaired... and use its microphone!
ReplyDelete